New Digs!

I know I don't have a lot of watchers, but I do know a few of you follow my RSS feed. Nevertheless, I'm here to (happily) announce that I have moved my blog. I have graduated over a Wordpress set-up on one of my sites. So, if you are interested in continuing to read my artistic ramblings, be sure to head on over and bookmark the site. Or subscribe to the RSS, if that is your thing.

My blog is also part of a new smiley-themed website I'm really proud of. So be sure to have a look around.

See you there, my friends!

Click here to visit PIXEL-PUSHING's New Homepage

Let the Ball Drop!

It's been a rough few months. Many of you have been following me over at deviantART and I much appreciate it. However, I have really missed musing about my art on a deeper level. Things have settled a bit in life and I plan to start posting more soon. Until then (and while there is still a couple days left in the "holiday" season), I leave you with a little visual/musical gift created by me and my husband. This was a major artistic endeavor for me. I do plan to talk about it more here in January.

Random Bits

I want to write a more detailed post about writing a storyline for Bitmap World. It was a really intriguing thing how the original story and what ultimately ended up on paper, er..screen, happened. Don't quite have time now, but it is next on my list. Until then, I've been doing a variety of pixel stuff, both for BMW, for my sites, and my deviantART page. Here's a sampling for your viewing pleasure.

A special request for a friend on a forum. Turned out very nice and ended up being a springboard for me getting active on dA.	Did some remastering of an image for use in an online generator. Click picture to see comparison.
I created an animated tugboat for a pixel project. I liked it so much, I made this static version.	Boss Hog's home from issue 308 of Bitmap World, before characters and text were added.
Graphical "stamp" inspired by my blog name.	When asked to do something the showed extreme opposites, I came up with the idea of death and a baby. Though, the little one cheats death.
An animated icon I did to commemorate Bitmap World's participation in the Blue Lotus webcomic crossover.	Joined a project where you were supposed to make an emote movie poster. I decided to do one of my favorite movies and was very pleased with the result. Click on picture to see comparison.

Spreading the Love?

I read on a forum where someone was self-conscious because they were posting their art in more than one place. Even though this person wasn't doing it to brag, they were afraid others might feel there was a level of overkill when posting your work in more than one place.

This got me thinking. Thing is, I thought the same way for a LONG time. I felt that if people wanted to see my art, I should make a page and invite them to come. In fact, I *preferred* for them to go to where I wanted them to go. It's certainly easy to have your fanbase in one place. Problem is, I did have some people come, but some simply didn't want to. They would say, "why don't you come on MySpace" or "you should make a DrunkDuck page". People like to stay in their element. If you are on Facebook, you want everyone to be on Facebook. If you are on a particular forum, you may not be interested in joining another community. When your art is about sharing, it is vital to make accessible to the masses, and that often means giving them multiple ways to consume your goods.

Now, this sounds all prophetic, but honestly it is something, until recently, I fought very hard against. When I was on a webcomic community site, I really couldn't understand the people who thought it was not merely okay, but vital, to have different places all over the internet to showcase their art. As I move further in that direction, I'm learning they were absolutely right.

I certainly don't begrudge those who want a single online home, a place they can share everything without the hassel of updating 20 different pages. On the other hand, I know that I have fans who prefer to read through Blogger, and I have fans who love to surf on deviantART, and there are others who like other outlets. It's actually difficult keeping up more than one site. Posting on 3-4 different places is not about ego. It's about sharing my work with others and making it as easy as possible for them to enjoy it.

A bit of an aside, but on the same subject, I was thinking about this blog. If I was simply looking for a ton of comments, I would have stopped posting here a long time ago! I've had this blog around 2 years and I think I have had about 5 comments total! LOL! Sure, I love comments, but that is not what this is about. I know people read and like my art here, and even if they don't explicitly tell me so, I feel good knowing they keep coming back and presumably enjoy my ramblings and pixels.

Base Packs

Peeking in quick with this one. Below I posted a link to the tutorial by Mazeguy on how to make smilies. Another version of smilies are called "emotes". They are generally softer in color and have a bit of a different look to them.

I have gotten a few inquiries from people asking where to start when making smilies. I just don't have much time to get a something together or do a more extensive tutorial. On deviantART, I recently came upon two starter packs that I think would be of great help to budding emoticonists. Note, these are for shaded smilies. On Bitmap World, I purpose use flat coloring since it's important that certain details are clear because it's a comic.

My program of choice is Paint Shop Pro, but you could use these bases in Photoshop as well as MS Paint! Below are the links. I think they're great and I hope they are useful to some of my readers.

Base pack by krissi001 - Just the bodies, but includes poses for jumping. I really like the coloring on these. Update! Since I posted this, the pack has been re-done and faces added. Cool beans!

Base pack by KimRaiFan - More non-traditional shading on these. The pack also include a lot of facial expressions.

Base pack by synfull - Nice shading and a lot of crisp colors to choose from.

Hopefully this will keep my readers busy while I'm off being busy. Have fun!!!

WoW Icons

For as popular as WoW and general medieval-theme is, I was shocked how few smilies were available. I don't personally play WoW, but I know tons of people who do. Having been a big Dungeons & Dragon fan in my youth, I love the whole Sword & Sorcery thing. Anyhow, as the saying goes: "when you see a void, fill it." I started to do some smilies on my own. When looking for pictures for inspiration, I came upon an icon set done by Iconshock.com. I was totally inspired by these and wanted to do pixelated versions. Below is a screenshot of the icon-pack ad with my smiley versions next to them.



I was very pleased on how they turned out. It inspired me to create a whole set of WoW characters. My sister, who is an avid WoW player said my renditions were great, so I do feel proud, especially since I don't have intimate knowledge of the characters.

If you are interested in seeing more of my medieval/WoW fonts, leave me a comment and I'll contact you with info.

Legal Disclaimer: World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc., and associated images are owned and copyrighted by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Pixel-Pushing is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

Quick Note: I have been doing some major posting over the weekend because I've had a bit of free time as I needed to wait for Jim to finish up some programming before I could move on to a couple of other projects which desperately need my attention. I probably won't be posting much here over the next week or two, but don't forget me! I'll still be pixeling and will be back as soon as possible.

Warcraft Pixel Fonts

In my log files, I see that quite a few people have stumbled on my site when searching for Warcraft fonts, particularly pixel fonts. Well, the help people along, here is the most typically used general font for WoW. It's called Morpheus and it's available from daFont HERE .

Of course, I am more intrigued by the searches for a warcraft pixel font. You would think that it would be impossible to have a pixelated medieval font. Well, so did I until I needed to find one for Bitmap World. After quite an exhaustive search, I came upon this font, HEINZ HEINRICH. It's gothic, it's pixelated, and it's beautiful. I ended up using the font for this strip HERE.

Heinz Heinrich (click on pic to go to download page on daFont.com)


In my searches, I found a few other pixel fonts which would be good for medieval/WoW stuff:

• BM GERMAR is less ornate, but it is very readable. It has that gothic look without being too over the top.

BM Germar (click on pic to go to download page on daFont.com)
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• AE SYSTEMATIC has a real Horde look to it. Easy to read and very clean, this would be a very good pixel WoW font.

AE Systematic (click on pic to go to download page on daFont.com)
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• JUPITER CRASH is obvious supposed to be a Sci-Fi inspired font, but the look and flavor makes it just as useful for another genre. It is very gothic in look and I think this font would work great for a medieval-themed project.

Jupiter Crash (click on pic to go to download page on daFont.com)
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• VENICE CLASSIC is a very nice calligraphic pixel font. Would work well for Old World lettering.

Venice Classic (click on pic to go to download page on daFont.com)